Because I Love You
by BamonDomesticity
Summary: In the wake of returning home from a hellish few months spent in isolation, Bonnie Bennett reacquaints herself with some important aspects of her former life, while assertively making the decision to unabashedly leave behind the toxic influences and embrace the right to live on her own terms for the first time. AU Post 6x10


**Disclaimer: I own nothing and if I did none of what we've been forced to watch would be unfolding before our eyes.**

Birds chirped unnecessarily loudly outside her bedroom window, making Bonnie grunt out in displeasure as she turned over beneath her blankets to lie face up in her lush Queen size canopy bed. She upgraded her plain bedroom set one weekend when she decided to come home from Whitmore, long before returning from a hellish nightmare of utter isolation, to suffer the pains of being the anchor in solitude and away from Jeremy's sympathetic puppy dog gaze. She lied and told him late that Friday evening that she was spending the night in at her dorm and ran the same game on Elena and Caroline, only telling them the truth of actually going home. Knowing no one hardly ever communicated effectively within their little group, she knew her secret was safe.

Leafy pools peeled open at the incessant trilling and the blaring morning sun now burning her retinas behind her closed lids. Bonnie grunted once more at her carelessness in drawing the curtain around her bed the night before and sat upright, glaring at the sun much in the way she did two days before Christmas while standing with a sad little trees while stuck in that hellhole, a completely barren version of 1994 Mystic Falls. Dropping balled fists to her sides, she drew her duvet away from her sitting figure and twisted her frame so that her legs dangled over the edge of her mattress. With a resigned sigh, Bonnie heaved herself from the bed to groan and stretch away her sleepiness. Just as she pivoted on her feet to pad into her en suite bathroom, her phone alerted her of an incoming message, halting her in her steps and redirecting them to the nightstand where the illuminated device sat.

Another sigh escaped Bonnie's mouth as she lifted her phone into her hand to see it was a message from Caroline, asking her to meet for lunch in yet another attempt at lame small talk where they tiptoed around the fact that Bonnie had withdrawn away from both her and Elena since returning home. With a purse to her full lips, she set her phone back where she retrieved it from and spun on her heal to stride into her bathroom and start up her shower, brushing off responding to the message until after a thorough and steamy scrub down.

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Feeling squeaky clean and strangely mellow, Bonnie pushed her way into the crowded diner off of campus where Caroline asked her to meet up at. She spotted the blonde sitting at a table to the far left of the door and she tried her hardest to mirror the brilliant smile overtaking the perky vampire's visage upon spotting her. Steeling her spine and internally reminding herself that turning tail and running at full speed out of there was in no way an option, Bonnie stepped up and claimed the vacant seat opposite her childhood friend, setting her wallet and phone beside the glass of ice water placed next to the napkin bound cutlery.

"I'm so glad you could make it, Bonnie. I feel like you've been so hard to get a hold of." Caroline cooed lightly, slapping her folded hands softly to the table top.

"I know, I've just- I'm trying to adjust. It's hard being back." She tried with all her might to add some genuine pep to her voice, but even she could hear the falseness of it ringing in her ears.

"I can tell you all about having a hard time adjusting." Caroline released a nervous huff of laughter, playfully rolling cornflower blues at Bonnie in a way to offset the seriousness of her words.

"I know it's probably crazy to say this, especially because I'm a vampire who has seen people die and have killed people, for the most part regretibly, but I just don't think I'll ever not be shocked by the loss of someone I love." Caroline's sad eyes met Bonnie's across the table before flickering away as the petite witch shifted uncomfortably in her seat, caught off guard at the flicker of warm settling in the pit of her stomach at such an earnest admission from the usually bubbly blonde sitting before her. Bonnie lifted one hand from her lap from where they both clenched the tops of her knees and layed a soothing palm atop the back of Caroline's splayed on the table.

"Look, Caroline, I know it was probably hard without me-" Bonnie's words were cut off by a wistful shake of Caroline's flaxen head, disrupting the finely spun curls adoring her head as she seemingly, not fully registering Bonnie's words as she snapped out of her own reverie, interrupted her friend's metaphoric extension of an olive branch to resume her pained confession.

"I can't deal with my mom dying. I just can't. I know, I know, I'm a vampire and people die everyday, but I don't have my dad, Stefan and I are in a really weird place, Elena's obsessed with Damon, even though she doesn't remember loving him, and I have to deal with my mom dying of an incurable disease." Incredulous cerulean irises gazed intently into shocked emerald hues.

That's about the time everything came to a screeching halt and Bonnie recoiled away from Caroline.

"Excuse me?" The astonishment was hard to miss in Bonnie's voice as she snatched her hand away from Caroline's, which was caught by a flushed faced Elena Gilbert as her willowy frame came into focus.

"Hey, Bonnie. Hey, Caroline." Elena sensed the tension enveloping the two of her friends as she claimed a seat to the left of Caroline and the right of Bonnie, putting her smack dab in the middle of them both.

"What are you doing here?" Not even bothering to hide the annoyance in her tone, Bonnie turned a heated glare towards Elena's confused and somewhat offended demeanor.

"Well, Caroline told me that she was going to make plans with you to get some lunch and I figured I'd tag along so I could see you too." Elena's radiant smile dimmed the longer it took for Bonnie's expression to melt into one more welcoming and less put off.

"Of course you did because that's what you do best, right? Tag along only after someone else decides to seek me out or when you want something."

Bonnie released a small bark of humorless laughter as she lifted her glass of water from the table to take a tiny sip, prolonging the irritation that threatened to come pouring out of her mouth any second. Instinctively glancing away from both of the girls sitting at the table, following the tingling sensation she felt racing up her spine, wide unblinking viridians crashed into an all too familiar pair of ice blue oceans, framed by ink black lashes matching the windblown tresses haphazardly covering the head of one disarmingly gorgeous Damon Salvatore.

In the mere seconds their eye contact was maintained, Bonnie felt the hard skip of her heartbeat, undoubtedly heard by not only Damon, but her lunchtime companions as well, blooming a furious blush in the apples of her cheeks before her attention was once more drawn back to Caroline's uncertain face.

"Bonnie, are you okay?" The pretty blonde's concerned voice at one time could talk Bonnie off the ledge of the highest building, but in that moment, filled her with an unmitigated amount of rage as she fought not to unleash her magic on her friends and alerting the entire establishment that you know, magic is real and can be used to hurt vampires, who by the way are also real. Somehow, she didn't think that was a situation worth stumbling into, so instead, she gathered a calming breath and turned a surprisingly lethal gaze to Caroline, who flinched in her seat at the sheer anger etched in her friend's features.

"No, the fuck, I'm not, 'okay,' Caroline. I'm not even the smallest bit the fuck, 'okay'." The profanity rendered the three vampires in the diner motionless as Bonnie tossed her eye line between both Elena and Caroline's appalled expressions.

"You're going to sit here and look me in the face, talking about how hard it is for you to deal with your fucking parents unfair and untimely deaths and fucking awkwardness between you and Stefan and this bitch's head," For emphasis, Bonnie waved a dismissive hand in said bitch's direction. "Being shoved so far up her own ass like I haven't just come back from the worst experience of my life?"

Bonnie sat slack jawed at the clueless and stupefied contortions creeping into both girls' features and scoffed in derision at the situation she found herself in.

"You know what? Fuck you both." Bonnie's laser focus hooked Caroline's glassy pools, which slowly dissolved into outraged sapphire tints.

Bonnie searched for the words to articulate the torrent of justifiable fury fueling her impending tirade.

"Caroline, I'm sorry about your mother dying, honestly, I am. I love Liz. She's like a mother to me because, let's face it, she like Miranda was more of one to me than my own was. I'm sorry that she's dying and that there's nothing you can do, but really. I don't give a shit. How you can sit there and bitch to me about the woes of your life, complaining about how unfair everything is and how upset you are at your circumstances when I've _died_, unfairly I might add, three _fucking_ times over is beyond me. That you could be that self involved in my presence is truly baffling to me right now."

Bonnie turned her agitated stare to Elena's equally confused face that conveyed the brunette's befuddlement and shock at the outburst from her ordinarily meek and mild mannered witchy sidekick, which really only spurred her on.

"The two of you..." Disbelief colored Bonnie's words as she shot Elena a scathing glare.

"My fucking god. Elena, you couldn't take the time to call me all on your own? You had to trail behind someone else's lead just to see me? Again? I can see that this whole, 'lunch,' is a piss poor excuse so the two of you could corner me and get me to talk about yourselves, so how about we flip the script, hmm? I feel like talking and you should listen up."

Bonnie didn't let Damon's delayed approach closer to the table to hover at the counter in the background slow her down a bit.

"For years, _years_, I've lived and died for you guys and it's because I love you. Because I love you, I came back after Grams died. I came back to face the one thing I was most terrified of. Murderous vampires that were out to tear my town apart and endanger the lives of everyone around us. Because I love you, I _begrudgingly_ worked with the one vampire I was most afraid of to protect this godforsaken place and eventually lost not only my _own_ _fucking_ life, but my _mother's_, my _father's_, and for what? To come back for the second time to the same old shit. My supposed friends whining about themselves, per usual, downplaying my trauma and the terror I experienced for months for the sake of moaning about the, by my estimation, insignificant plagues imposing on their familial lives and their love lives like what I've gone through means _fucking _nothing. Give me a _fucking _break.

Because I love you, I forgot to love myself and ended up in a hell, not of my own making might I remind you, and spent what will most likely be the worst time of my short existence. Which, I'll admit, wasn't so bad when I was stuck there with Damon. Before that psychopath, Kai, made himself known. Compared to this bullshit right here, right now, I'd gladly return. At least with Damon, who arguably is one the most enigmatic creatures I've ever met, I didn't feel like this. Like I mean nothing."

Damon dropped all pretenses of pretending he wasn't eavesdropping and turned to stare at Bonnie's profile, smirking at the determination lining the delicate contours of her flushed caramel face.

"With Damon I had someone that gave me hope, that kept me together and I can't believe it took something that extreme to see that the one person that cares about me the most, the one person that has repeatedly saved my life, is the same one I spent so much time hating. Because I forgot to love myself, I let my judgments and prejudices and fear dictate the limited view in which I saw the world. I was so stubborn and insistent on putting everything and everyone above myself and my feelings that I didn't stop to notice that the one person keeping me together, the one person that has somehow always kept me going was neither one of my best friends. The same best friends I sacrificed everything for."

The irate expressions of her two table mates shifted into shamed faces, equipped with two pairs of doe chestnut and somber crystal hues respectively falling to the faded wooden table top, unable to stay trained on Bonnie.

"It wasn't all terrible, like I said. I had someone in that god awful hell that kept me from falling apart and then in another bout of idiotic selflessness on my part, I sent him back home. Instead of keeping the one person keeping me together with me, I sent him back so I could die all alone, once again.

Entire the psychopath, who not only shot me with an arrow, but stabbed me in the same spot, after I sent away my magic in my fucking teddy bear, to steal my blood and leave me stranded all alone."

Bonnie crossed her legs and laved her dry lips with her tongue followed by a thoughtful shake of her head.

"Then suddenly, there was a bright spot on the horizon of the endless shittiness that situation, the one person that kept me together came back for me. And you want to know something? I wasn't even surprised that he came back. Something inside me knew that since I couldn't make it out on my own, if anyone could save me, it would be the one person that's has been proven to care about me the most. Damon fucking Salvatore. I was more shocked that Elena showed up with him than I was about him returning at all, but I raced home. Drove like a bat on it's way of hell, literally, only to be met with an empty porch, the stark opposite of the note left for me by the one person who came back for me and realized that I was just meant to suffer.

I spent the following couple of fucking months by myself, to celebrate Christmas and my fucking birthday all by myself. Because I forgot to love myself, I somehow ended up being punished for the past few years for daring to be a good person, a reliable person, a loyal person. Again, for what? To come back to an empty life where I have no family and the laughable love of my short life has fucked every girl in town and a couple of disingenuous girlfriends who prioritize the chipping of a fucking fang over my life? And to make matters worse, Elena does the dumbest fucking thing and has her memories wiped of the one person that kept me together, compelled from her drugged out grief stricken brain all because she couldn't handle the pain of not being able to ride his dick for the rest of eternity."

Sparing no consideration to Elena's hurt face, Bonnie scoffed again, a little harder this time around.

"Tell me something? Were you that upset about _me_ dying? Again? Did you have to have Alaric compel away the memories of your best friend, whom you've known all your life, whom has died bringing back your younger fucking brother to life? Were you taking drugs to hallucinate me?"

At Elena's prolonged silence Bonnie sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes to the glass sitting in front of her. Damon, from his spot at the counter, openly gawked at his witchy little firecracker while she laid into her pathetic excuse for besties, still squealing, yes squealing in glee on the inside at how emphatic Bonnie was about just how much **he **meant to her.

"I didn't think so. So tell me, why did you come back for me? Why did you follow behind the one person who kept me together, the person I sent away because I cared too much to make him suffer an eternity alone with a real homicidal maniac? For me? If so, why didn't you meet me half way? I gunned it at over nearly a hundred miles an hour, racing to get back to Mystic Falls from fucking Portland. Why didn't you run and meet me half way? The spell only required me to ingest Liv's blood in order to return, didn't matter where that was. So, why didn't you try to make it to me as hard as I tried to make it to you?

I can venture a guess, now that I'm back and have a clear handle on things. If I know you, you probably only started talking to Damon when you found out, through a source that wasn't Damon himself because he was probably being petty by withholding the fact that he had my magic stuffed Ms. Cuddles from you, indicative of my apparent survival, in order to punish you for the aforementioned stupid fucking decision to compel choice memories away. And knowing you, you probably skirted around his rightful agitation with you to try and manipulate him into saving me. That's another thing you do, aside from either screwing up sound plans and tagging along on someone else's mission to rescue me or their suicide mission for the benefit of our hometown, selfishly leaving behind the same _fucking_ brother I brought back to life for you without a thought just to die alongside the dude, who has the dick you, again, loved to ride.

To answer my prior question about why you didn't meet me, I know now that it was because you were upset that Damon compelled Alaric to get the ascendant to aid in his plan to save me. What you don't know, is that Damon told me that you only wanted to save me to ask me whether or not you should get back together with him and then turned around and acted like he was doing it to win his way back into your panties. Like he doesn't care about me at all for me and only as far as it gets him in your good graces. You might be surprised to know that he told me everything. He's been sweet and kind and patient with me, completely un-Damon like and I swear to everything I hold dear, I couldn't appreciate him any more for it."

After she released a heaving sigh, Bonnie peers over to Caroline, who remained strangely mute during her entire spiel.

"I love you guys, but now that I've, in this moment, figured out that I need to love myself, I'm _choosing_ myself. I need time and space and room to breathe without the constant reminders of what I've been forced to endure. That's all I see when I look at you, and I know that might hurt you, but it's true. I'm choosing me and if you love me even half as much as you say, but don't show, you'll allow me this. Allow me this because if you don't I'll run so long and so far away from you, I'd cast the most convoluted spell to cloak myself and disappear off the face of this Earth just to escape you, that you'll long for the days past after you found out I was dead, the first time when you had no choice but to move on with your lives."

At the end of her rant, Bonnie glanced from one affronted face to the other, temper somewhat cooled by the unburdening of her inner most feelings, raising her room temperature glass of water to her lips for a healthy swallow.

"Is that something you two can live with?"

Elena and Caroline, for their part, turned bewildered gazes to each other, knowing, and silently communicating with one another that neither one of them really had much say so in the matter. Elena braved being the one to speak first, courageously showing maturity in the face of all her sins being laid bare before her in some crappy dinner.

"If that's what you want, Bonnie. If it's really what you want, I'll try." The defeated smile tugging at Elena's lips would have once upon a time weakened Bonnie's resolve, but she stood firm in her declaration and turned eyes to Caroline, awaiting her concession as well.

"I'll try my best to give you what you need right now. Which is obviously not to be around us." Caroline's clipped tone was met with a hard kick to the shin by Elena under the table accompanied with a deathly glare from the chastised brunette.

"Ouch. Fine. If you want me to stay away, I'll stay away. I'll wait for you to come back to me." The earnestness of Caroline's words smoothed over the previous bratty retort and Bonnie answered with a single nod of her head before she rose from her seat, gathering her phone and wallet on her ascent.

"Thank you. This might be kind of harsh and as much I'm trying not to cling to the resentment that I'm currently holding onto, I know we're family and sometimes family needs a break. Doesn't mean that the love isn't still there, I'm just choosing to love myself more."

With a departing glance at both her stoic friends, Bonnie strolls away from the table and directly up to the vampire still hovering at the counter, who at that precise moment focused his gaze forward in nonchalance. Bonnie stands there a minute just staring at the side of his face, taking in the sturdy line of his jaw and the shock of jet black strands framing his profile.

"Don't even sit here and pretend like you didn't hear every last word I said, Damon."

Damon, in a mock show of humility ceases the arrogant facade and meets Bonnie's eyes with his own. The snippy retort dying instantly on his lips at the melancholy his weary little witch was valiantly trying to mask.

"How do you feel? Getting all that out in the open?" Genuine interest translated from Damon's lilt to Bonnie's ear, resulting in an indifferent shrug of an exposed caramel shoulder, left bared by her fitted tank top, and a content smile claiming bow shaped lips.

"Better, I think. Thanks for asking."

"Not a problem, Bon Bon. For a minute there, it looked like things were gonna take a turn for the flammable." A wry chuckle leaves Damon's lips as he moves to stand beside Bonnie's still upright figure.

"No matter how angry I might be with them, I'd never kill my friends. It would make me dying over and over again completely pointless and I deserve better than that."

"That you do, Bon Bon. Now, I don't want you to think I won't exhaust every avenue to find you, but in the in the spirit of keeping everything open and honest between us, I need to know something. Do you plan on disappearing on me should I come sniffing around?"

Laughing authentically for the first time in longer than she could remember, Bonnie, uncaring of the two vampires still seated at the table, presumably hanging onto every word that left her and Damon's lips, linked her fingers with his and smiled up at his handsome face reassuringly as she repeated the two words that only held meaning to the two of them before their inevitable exit out of the diner.

"Not exactly."

**A/N: **Some of you might recognize me from Tumblr. I just really wanted to try my hand at writing something that I want to see happen because it's clear that TPTB only intend to screw us all over. I'm unsure as to whether or not I'll leave this as a oneshot and I really hope that no one finds offense to the way I've portrayed the characters, this is purely my spin on the story.

Feel free to review.


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